For can anyone fail to see that there is no surer or more direct road than by Mary for uniting all mankind in Christ and obtaining through Him the perfect adoption of sons, that we may be holy and immaculate in the sight of God? For if to Mary it was truly said: “Blessed art thou who hast believed because in thee shall be fulfilled the things that have been told thee by the Lord” (Luke i., 45); or in other words, that she would conceive and bring forth the Son of God and if she did receive in her breast Him who is by nature Truth itself in order that “He, generated in a new order and with a new nativity, though invisible in Himself, might become visible in our flesh” (St. Leo the Great, Ser. 2, De Nativ. Dom.): the Son of God made man, being the “author and consummator of our faith”; it surely follows that His Mother most holy should be recognized as participating in the divine mysteries and as being in a manner the guardian of them, and that upon her as upon a foundation, the noblest after Christ, rises the edifice of the faith of all centuries.
~Pope St. Pius X, February 2, 1904, Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum, Encyclical on the Immaculate Conception (link below)
Over one hundred years ago, Pope St. Pius X issued a document which discussed the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He wrote clearly in a language that can be understood by all. I am re-posting a link to the document today (we originally posted it in 2017), because Pope St. Pius X tells us much in this document about the Blessed Virgin Mary; it is worth a read, especially in these confusing times. As Catholics we need to know what the Catholic Church has always taught about the Blessed Virgin Mary. If you want to know more on this topic, you might also take a walk around any one of the large cathedrals scattered throughout the world that were dedicated, and built, in the Blessed Virgin Mary’s name. Such grand edifices are reflections of the love the Catholic people have held for her in times past. I think of one altar I saw in 2024 in a small church in Rome. It was laden with gold stamping of her monogram. Voitive candles burned all around. Her portrait was painted by a master, and she appeared as Queen holding her infant King. I thought of all of the love, and thought, and care, that went into the construction of this little altar. The people love Our Lady, and as St. Maximilian Kolbe said, we can never love her (enough) as Jesus did. But back to Pius X, the pontiff concludes his teaching with this:
“We close these letters, Venerable Brethren, by manifesting anew the great hope We earnestly cherish that through this extraordinary gift of Jubilee granted by Us under the auspices of the Immaculate Virgin, large numbers of those who are unhappily separated from Jesus Christ may return to Him, and that love of virtue and fervor of devotion may flourish anew among the Christian people. Fifty years ago, when Pius IX, proclaimed as an article of faith the Immaculate Conception of the most Blessed Mother of Christ, it seemed, as we have already said, as if an incredible wealth of grace were poured out upon the earth; and with the increase of confidence in the Virgin Mother of God, the old religious spirit of the people was everywhere greatly augmented. Is it forbidden us to hope for still greater things for the future? True, we are passing through disastrous times, when we may well make our own the lamentation of the Prophet: “There is no truth and no mercy and no knowledge of God on the earth. Blasphemy and Iying and homicide and theft and adultery have inundated it” (Os. iv.,1-2). Yet in the midst of this deluge of evil, the Virgin Most Clement rises before our eyes like a rainbow, as the arbiter of peace between God and man: “I will set my bow in the clouds and it shall be the sign of a covenant between me and between the earth” (Gen. ix.,13). Let the storm rage and sky darken – not for that shall we be dismayed. “And the bow shall be in the clouds, and I shall see it and shall remember the everlasting covenant” (Ibid.16). “And there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh” (Ibid.15.). Oh yes, if we trust as we should in Mary, now especially when we are about to celebrate, with more than usual fervor, her Immaculate Conception, we shall recognize in her that Virgin most powerful “who with virginal foot did crush the head of the serpent” (Off. Immac. Conc.).” (end of excerpt from Pope St. Pius X)
Hail Mary, full of grace!
Full text:
Link to the declaration of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception:
